Friday, July 1, 2011

Copenhagen: Rosenborg Castle, Round Tower, Military Parade

The occasion here at Rosenborg Castle is the return of Danish troops from NATO service in Afghanistan: awards of medals, speeches, cheers and applause, happy people, bands. The castle is elegant: Christian IV was a prolific builder. Find Rosenborg and the Round Tower and other landmarks he had constructed at http://www.copenhagenet.dk/cph-rosenborg.htm.

Christian IV was born at Frederiksborg Castle, at Hillerod near Kronborg; built and lived and died at Rosenborg, and is buried at Roskilde Cathedral with his first wife, Queen Anna Cathrine of Brandenburg. She had died much earlier (when?), the King remarried, and here dates of which Queen was where and who else is involved are a puzzle. The site says that the King's quarters were in the northern section of the castle, and the Queen was in the southern, which makes sense for dalliances du jour. But another site says that he actually built Rosenborg for the favorite, Vibeka Kruse, and that she only left in 1648 after the King's death, and when a son-in-law of the King expelled her. History's mysteries. See Denmark Road Ways, Kronborg and Frederiksborg: Christian IV and Mistress, Vibeka Kruse

Our focus was instead on the soldiers there, and the palace as a backdrop. Troops. Uniforms, men, women, and a diversity reflecting the globe.

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View from Sonderborg Castle

Sonderborg is off the usual tourist track: Jutland, but far out the southeastern peninsula. It is an ancient site, naval and land battles; its castle has been used, and redesigned and refurbished through the Renaissance and 19th Centuries.

Waiting, Kronborg, Zealand DK

Holger Danske, or Ogier the Dane, by H.G.Pedersen-Dan (we believe), this near knoll known as Hamlet's Grave